


The Long March Home

by Phoenixflames12



Series: An Endless Night: Extended Scenes [12]
Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 13:26:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12795540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: Newly returned to his wife and family at Lallybroch, Captain Jamie Fraser dreams of the long Baltic march to escape the Russian guns.





	The Long March Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to my longer World War 2 alternate universe story, 'An Endless Night.' You don't have to have read that first, but it may help!

_He’s moving, only the weight of his body being pushed out of the snow could call it walking, along a road that is little more than snow-covered slurry. Scattered remnants of civilisation litter the countryside, blackened shells of burnt out cottages, a copse of thorn trees rearing like black spiders against the slate coloured horizon._

_The cold is almost unbearable, sinking into the pit of his stomach, curling around his throat, making every step an agony of endurance._

_At times he staggers, barely able to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. The road ahead of them is a canvas stained with death, the ground littered with the detritus of a failed penetration._

_Bonnets of burned out tanks are heaped with soft snow, piling its way into deep ravines against punctured wheels, the ghost of diesel fumes hanging sullenly in the air_

_A child’s toy, only just distinguishable now as a bear with one black button eye missing and a lopsided smile; its’ tattered fur pecked out by birds for their nests, oozing soft scatterings of strawdust stuffing._

_They were not the only refugees on the road then. The bodies of their comrades that he tries so hard to remember are not the only ones that had fallen, propped like wax dummies against the abandoned carts. Some of the men ran for the boots, the leather hard and cracked with exposure but anything, anything was better than walking without, breaking out of line and clawing their way to the corpses, tugging off the dead man’s boots to tie the laces around their necks._

_He cannot part with his._

_He stops, barely feeling his feet against the tattered remains of his boots as he does so. Something in his heart is choking him, rising thick and wet and hot against his throat and despite his exhaustion or perhaps because of it, he cannot seem to stop it._

_Willie._

_Willie had had a bear like that, a hand-me-down from Brianna, found in one of Lallybroch’s attics._

_A shout from one of the guards, a white uniformed ghost armed to the teeth, moving towards him, the dark shadow of the primed rifle barely registering._

_The bear’s fur is soft and wet, clumps coming away in his fingers._

_‘Willie… Mo mac… Mo bhalaiach…’ The words are thick and hard against his tongue as the bear transforms, shifting into the body of his son, all of seven years old, lying for all the world asleep in his arms. His legs give way, buckling to the snow and he finds himself kneeling, body wracked with sobs that he does not have the strength to utter aloud._

_‘Willie,’ a trembling finger reaches out to trace the curve of his son’s cheek. The skin is cold as marble, a sliver of scarlet blood catching against his lips. ‘A Dhia, Willie!’_

_A hand to his shoulder, but he cannot look up. Cannot tear his eyes away from the lifeless body of his son, the boy whom he barely knows, the boy who by rights should be home and safe at Lallybroch._

_Oh Claire, I am sorry!_

_‘There’s naught ye can be doing for them, sir,’ a soft, West Coast voice says quietly, a hand tightening on his shoulder. ‘Come away now, else ye’ll be shot and we canna have that, can we?’_

_I canna. I… I canna leave them!_

_He shudders against the weight of the hand, curling over Willie, not caring._

_‘Please sir, come away. Come away now.’_

* * *

 

 

‘Jamie! Jamie, love, it’s a dream. Wake up. I’m here. I’m here, I’m not going away.’

 

A hand on his shoulder. A hand that he recognises, a hand that he has yearned for so long and yet…

 

His breathing comes wet and ragged, his lungs feeling as if they are being torn apart.

 

‘Willie,’ he hears himself gasp, the word lost in a sob as she holds him, soothing him with words that make no sense, one hand buried deep against the back of his neck, the other caressing his chin.

 

His _Sorcha,_ his light, now and always, holding him, keeping him from falling back into the terror of his dreams that are not dreams at all.

 

‘I know’, he hears her whisper as he buries his head in her chest, feeling her shift to light the lamp on the bedside table.

 

‘I know love,’ she whispers around the offered kiss. Her face shifts and blurs against the veil of tears that still clouds his vision. The light of her eyes, the weight of her thumb reaching to blot away his tears, holding him as he tries to supress the shudders.

 

Tries to banish the image of Willie’s face, so peaceful against the carnage of the snow that he could be asleep. Tries to focus on the weight of Claire’s hand on his shoulder and not the glassy blankness of his sons’ eyes, staring back into darkness.

 

‘Tell me?’

 

Her voice seems very far away, her grip on his shoulder tightening.

 

Outside the window the lonely cry of a tawny owl swooping low over the moor pierces the night.

 

He can hear her breathing; soft and low, encouraging him back.

 

Hear the house groan and creak around him, the soft pad of footsteps as one of the children passes the bedroom door on the way to the lavatory, the clunk of a door being pushed shut.  

 

_Such sounds that he has longed for!_

 

‘I… I was there, Claire.’ He shudders, fixing his eyes on the shadows of the miniature portraits that he had commissioned after their wedding which hang above the chest of drawers at the foot of the bed.

 

She doesn’t reply, reaching down to rest her chin on his shoulder.

 

‘We… We were being marched out towards the Baltic Coast because the Russians were invading wi’ no food, save what we could scavenge. The men…’

 

He feels himself shudder to a halt, unable to stop the sudden barrage of memories, the faces of men whom he had trusted with all his heart, men who had survived the brutalities of the march into captivity from St-Valery, now lying in the side of the road, their bodies laid to waste by dysentery and gangrene, the lucky ones left with a soft squeeze of the hand and a murmured prayer, brittle in the wind.

_Slan leat, mo chariad choir. Slan leat._

‘We had to leave so many! So many, _Sassenach_! I tried, but I couldna… I couldna save…’

 

‘I know you did. They were your men, they wouldn’t have expected anything less,’ her words are soft with tragedy as she pulls him further into her embrace.

 

‘And Willie,’ the words are out before he can stop them.

 

‘I could… I could see him in so many of their faces, _mo nighean don._ So many and I…’

 

‘Hush’, she whispers, her grip tightening on his shoulders, the words that she cannot bear to say aloud blooming in the silence.

 

Bloom.

 

Pulse.

 

Snap.

 

‘Hush, my love. Willie’s safe. He’s in bed, he’s asleep… He’s not…’

 

He gulps back a sob as she trails off.

 

_Not dead._

_Just a dream, it’s just a dream man!_

_He’s safe, like she promised, so why…?_

 

‘May I… May I see him, _Sassenach_?’

 

Without a word, she lets him, leading him gently out into the passageway, down the stairs onto the second - floor landing. The house creaks and his hands shake in hers, the stiff fingers trembling a terrified tattoo on her arm.

 

Ten paces past the North bedroom, the guest bathroom and three up the blue velvet carpeted stairs. Steps that he had taken so often, a route that he had taken every night until the age of eight when he was sent away to boarding school for the first time, clinging to his brother and had to learn the unfamiliar route to the dormitory, a route that he had walked with such joy on his first night home and now…

 

The door to his room, Willie’s room is ajar, a chink of orange moonlight spilling across the bare wooden floorboards.

 

Claire’s face is shining as she pushes it further open, a finger to her lips.

 

Slowly, he moves towards the bed and she moves with him, heart pounding, a terror that she can’t explain exploding in her throat.

 

_Willie._

_The boy that he had left as a bairn at her breast, the son whom he had not seen grow or change, the son that she praised God for every single day._

He is fast asleep, a sliver of tattered moonlight catching at his curls, his head turned towards the window.

 

‘Oh, _mo bhalaiach,’_ the words come in a reverent hush as he kneels, reaching out to tuck a curl back behind his sons’ ear, revelling in the soft flush of the skin as it tingles under his touch. The freckled birthmark, so faint that it was barely noticeable, running against the line of his jaw. The slanted eyes, the curve of his lips, turned slightly in sleep.

 

‘Oh, _Claire’,_ the words come tight and strangled with tears, her face blurring as she smiles down at him, nodding in the quiet as he turns back to Willie, bending to place a kiss on his temple, his next words a breath against the sleep filled skin.

 

‘ _Tha gaol agam ort, William. Mo mac. Mo bhalaiach. Tha goal agam ort.’_

 

‘Thank you’, he whispers after a long moment, reaching a hand to her. She comes to him slowly, snuggling close, the warmth of her pressed close to his heart.

 

‘Thank you, _mo ghraidh._ Thank you for our son.’

* * *

_**Fin** _

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


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